


afterdeath

by womanaction



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 23:44:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7458271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angsty minific set after "Afterlife."</p>
            </blockquote>





	afterdeath

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by andmichellesaid for Tumblr minific challenge.

She remembered clearly how she had felt when she heard him. _How dare he,_ she had thought, surprised by the bitter taste that rose in her throat. _How dare he cry for me._

Maybe she had told him the truth just to get it out there, to make her feelings more real. Heaven seemed like a hazy dream at this point, a memory too beautiful to have been true. Maybe she did it to validate her anger, knowing that he would hate her friends on her behalf. She had to be the strong one, the martyr; he was a soulless monster who owed these people nothing.

When she left, she had felt better, or at least a little less empty. As soon as she went back in the Magic Box, though, she heard something. It wasn’t loud; certainly a non-enhanced Buffy couldn’t have made it out. But she could, and it made her feel things. Things she used to have names for, like “pity” and “sympathy”, but those descriptors seemed a little too strong and definite for the weak drizzle of distant emotion in her. Still, something propelled her, so she cracked the door open and peeked through.

Spike was sobbing wholeheartedly. His hands covered his face, but his slight figure was shaking with emotion. He looked as broken as she’d ever seen him, and somewhere in her mind she remembered marveling that this was the same fearsome killer who had murdered two Slayers. He didn’t seem to notice that she was watching; he seemed absorbed in his murmured mantra. Through the sobs, she distinguished words. “God, I didn’t know…if only I coulda…chip be damned, I would have…I didn’t know.”

She closed the door again silently, refusing to let herself dwell on what she’d seen. The thought that a heartless vampire could cry for her, shed meaningful tears when she herself was barren of feeling - it sickened her. She would realize later the almost perverse joy she had taken in it, that vicarious pain he wore so proudly.

Maybe she’d had another reason for telling him. She had wanted him to hurt for her, in a way that she couldn’t. In that moment, he was more real than she had the privilege to be. It would have moved her if she didn’t hate it so much.


End file.
